"Fredo, you're nothing to me now. You're not a brother, you're not a friend. I don't want to know you or what you do. I don't want to see you at the hotels, I don't want you near my house. When you see our mother, I want to know a day in advance, so I won't be there. You understand?"

--Michael Corleone

To follow up on our post last night, add another prominent Democrat who's giving their 2000 vice presidential candidate and three term senator the cold shoulder. Here's Bill Richardson and Joe Lieberman on the presidential campaign trail in September of 2003:

Lieberman, holding a glass of red wine, receives Richardson in the living room. They, too, are old friends. They worked on the 1992 Democratic platform together. They hug. "I'm not drinking alone," Lieberman tells Richardson as the governor is handed a glass. They clink.

"I wore this to curry favor with you," Lieberman says, pointing to a New Mexico pin on his lapel. "You also saw that I spoke a little Spanish in [the debate]."

"I thought that was Yiddish," Richardson says, and slaps Lieberman's right triceps.

"I love Bill Richardson," Lieberman says in a brief speech a few minutes later. "When the good Lord created Bill Richardson, he threw the mold away."

Richardson raises his glass to Lieberman, the last Democratic running mate, who, in turn, raises his glass to the man who might be the next.

Well, that didn't work out for Bill, did it? And it while these men may still profess their "love" and respect for each other, business is business, as Tammy Bruce notes:

All the polls, from the beginning, made it clear that Joe would win in a three-way general race, but the party hacks just couldn't risk upsetting Soros or their far-left Puppet Masters.

Now, in the ultimate bending-over for the party, Bill Richardson, Friend of Bill and Governor of New Mexico, has asked Joe Lieberman to "step aside" and not run as an independent.

Richardson calls on Lieberman to step aside:

[Richardson] called Lieberman "a good friend of mine" and a "true public servant."

But he said in a statement Thursday that he was backing Ned Lamont, the man who defeated Lieberman in this week's Democratic primary.

"I look forward to supporting Ned as he fights to help Democrats take back the Senate, and I call on Joe Lieberman to respect the will of the voters and step aside," Richardson said.

Uh. Yeah. Right. The will of the voters? That would be determined in November, Guv. For being the "pro-choice" party it's fascinating how that doesn't apply to elections and candidates. Obviously, the Dems know they cannot beat Joe, so they want him to surrender. They've been hanging out with the French too long. And gee, the party hacks did so much for him during the primary, I betcha he'd just love to do whatever they ask of him now. Not.

The Dems now have a rather slimy bed they've made, and they're all going to have to deal with it. But, as is the usual case for Friends of Bill and the nihilistic foundation he left behind, these same people don't want to deal with the repercussions of their actions--whether it be sexually assaulting a woman, lying to the American people, or eating one of their own--who happens to be the better person, the better candidate, and ultimately, the winner.

If Lieberman does win as an independent in November (and early polls favor him, though the key word is early), it will be very interesting to see what his relationship will be with his former party, and who makes the first efforts to bridge this exponentially widening gap.